I've got a bunch of random non HD movie (DVD) rips that are in various formats, but generally compressed to 700MB. Glancing at one in GSpot now, it's using xvid at 600-700kbps. I don't have access to the rest of them at the moment, but some others used divx or other mpeg4-part2 codecs.
Would converting these videos into something like h.264/x264 allow me to reduce filesize without a noticeable drop in their quality? I'm a complete noob when it comes to video encoding, but I wanted to save some space - I figured since h.264 needs so much more power to decode, that it should be able to hit the same quality as xvid/etc at a lower bitrate. And if it would reduce filesize, what programs would you recommend for doing the conversion? I've heard of handbrake, but don't have any real experience with anything (other than windows movie maker, which doesn't really count).
Would converting these videos into something like h.264/x264 allow me to reduce filesize without a noticeable drop in their quality? I'm a complete noob when it comes to video encoding, but I wanted to save some space - I figured since h.264 needs so much more power to decode, that it should be able to hit the same quality as xvid/etc at a lower bitrate. And if it would reduce filesize, what programs would you recommend for doing the conversion? I've heard of handbrake, but don't have any real experience with anything (other than windows movie maker, which doesn't really count).
